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Aw’ve Hard Wark To Howd Up Mi Yead
From ‘Lancashire Miscellany’, 1960, edited by James Bennett, published by Hirst, Kidd & Rennie, Oldham.
This is another of the poems of Samuel Laycock’s poems of the Cotton Famine – the time in the 1860s when the American Civil War meant that no cotton could reach Lancashire and the was ‘clemming’ (starvation) and ‘starving’ (suffering from cold) across most of the cotton districts, perhaps most particularly in west Lancashire. Aw’ve Hard Wark To Howd Up Mi Yead
By Samuel Laycock (1826 - 1893)
Wheerever aw trudge neaw-a-days,
Aw’m certain to see some owd friend
Lookin’ anxiously up i’ mi face,
An’ axin when times are beawn t’ mend.
Aw’m surprised heaw folk live, aw declare,
Wi’ th’ clammin’ an’ starvin’ they’n stood;
God bless ‘em, heaw patient they are!
Aw wish aw could help ‘em, aw would.
But really aw’ve nowt aw con give,
Except it’s a bit of a song,
An’ th’ Muses han hard wark to live,
One’s bin hamper’d an’ powfagg’d so long;
Aw’ve tried to look cheerful an’ bowd,
An’ yo’ know what aw’ve written an’ said,
But iv truth mun be honestly towd,
Aw’ve hard wark to howd up mi yead!
Ther’ll be some on us missin’ aw deawt
Iv ther’ isn’t some help for us soon;
We’n bin jostled an’ tumbled abeawt.
Till we’re welly o knocked eawt o’ tune;
Eawr Margit, hoo frets an’ hoo cries,
As hoo sits theer, wi’ th’ choilt on her knee.
An’ aw connot blame th’ lass, for hoo tries
To be cheerful an’ gradely wi’ me.
Yon Yankees may think it’s rare fun,
Kickin’ up such a shindy o’ th’ globe;
Confound ‘em, aw wish they’d get done,
For they’d weary eawt th’ patience o’ Job!
We shall have to go help ‘em, that’s clear,
Iv they dunno’ get done very soon;
Iv eawr Voluteers wur o’er theer,
They’d sharpen ‘em up to some tune.
Neaw it’s hard for a mortal to tell
Heaw lung they may plague us this road;
Iv they’d hurt nob’dy else but the’rsel’,
They met fo eawt an’ feight till they’re stow’d.
Aw think it’s high time someb’dy spoke,
When so mony are crying’ for bread;
For ther’s hundreds an’ theawsands o’ folk,
Deawn i’ Lancashire, hardly hawve fed.
Th’ big men, when they yer eawr complaint,
May treat it as “gammon” an’ “stuff,”
An’ tell us we use to’ much paint,
But we dunnot daub paint on enough,
Iv they think it’s noan true what we sen,
Ere they charge us wi’ tellin’ a lie,
Let ‘em look into th’ question loike men,
An’ come deawn here a fortnit an’ try.
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